Big Brother is watching: Chinese city with 2.6m cameras is world’s most heavily surveilled

Cities around the world are scaling up their use of surveillance cameras and facial recognition systems but which ones are watching their citizens most closely?

Qiu Rui, a policeman in Chongqing, was on duty this summer when he received an alert from a facial recognition system at a local square. There was a high probability a man caught on camera was a suspect in a 2002 murder case, the system told him.

The citys surveillance system scans facial features of people on the streets from frames of video footage in real time, creating a virtual map of the face. It can then match this information against scanned faces of suspects in a police database. If there is a match that passes a preset threshold, typically 60% or higher, the system immediately notifies officers. Three days later the police captured the man, who eventually admitted that he was the suspect.

Cases such as this, where facial recognition systems are used to help local police crack crime cases, are not unusual in the south-west China city, which recently ranked first in an analysis of the worlds most surveilled cities compiled by the UK-based technology research firm Comparitech. With 2.58m cameras covering 15.35 million people equal to one camera for every six residents Chongqing has more surveillance cameras than any other city in the world for its population, beating even Beijing, Shanghai and tech hub Shenzhen.

But critics warn such widespread surveillance violates internationally guaranteed rights to privacy. To meet international privacy standards enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, both collection and use of biometric data should be limited to people found to be involved in wrongdoing, and not broad populations who have no specific link to crime. Individuals should have the right to know what biometric data the government holds on them. Chinas automated facial recognition systems violate those standards.

A few weeks later, it emerged that the private operator of the Kings Cross development in London had deployed facial recognition technology in its CCTV network without express consent or warnings to the public. After public outcry and an investigation by the Information Commissioners Office, the programme was scrapped.

Weve almost got as many CCTV cameras as China, not quite, but heading that way, says Paul Wiles, the UKs biometrics commissioner. With the rise of things like facial recognition, that is why we need new legislation that decides what is in the publics interest and the legal structure within which they can be used. We shouldnt drift there by accident.

In May, San Francisco became the first major US city to enforce a ban. Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who championed the legislation, said: This is really about saying: We can have security without being a security state. We can have good policing without being a police state. And part of that is building trust with the community based on good community information, not on Big Brother technology.

Since then, two more Californian cities, Oakland and Berkeley, have also passed bans on all government use of facial recognition technology. Somerville, Massachusetts, passed a similar law this summer.

I think some cities in the UK may well follow those in the US that have banned facial recognition, or at least call for a temporary halt until we can contemplate legislation, says Wiles. Personally, I think the problem with banning is that you then dont make that crucial decision of whether any of these uses are in the public interest. I would rather see a proper legislative framework and proper trial.

Some people support facial recognition on the basis that technology has always driven change and is a force for good if used responsibly and proportionately. The facial recognition technology genie is out of the bottle, says Stuart Greenfield of Facewatch, the UKs leading facial recognition company. If used responsibly by law enforcement and business to assist in reducing crime it is a positive force for good.